Tennis News

Countdown To Turin Begins As 2021 Nitto ATP Finals Tickets Go On Sale

The countdown to the 2021 Nitto ATP Finals, the prestigious season finale of the ATP Tour, has begun. The eight-day event, to be held from 14 to 21 November 2021, will see the best eight qualified singles players and doubles teams of the year compete at the Pala Alpitour Arena in Turin. It will also mark a historic handover to the Italian city, which will play host to the Nitto ATP Finals from 2021 to 2025.

With less than a year to go, today marks the launch of a coordinated national and international communication campaign by the City of Turin, Piedmont Region, Turin Chamber of Commerce and Tourism Turin, in collaboration with ATP and the Italian Tennis Federation (FIT), the tournament organisers. The campaign will see the city of Turin lit up in the promotional colours of the 2021 Nitto ATP Finals, and will also mark the official ticketing launch for the event.

In keeping with the major events strategy of Turin, the tournament will have a strong focus on innovation, in addition to environment and sustainability. By employing cutting-edge technological solutions, spectators and tourists will be able to follow matches and experience the event throughout the city. Ticketing promotions will also focus on attracting younger generations and schools closer to the sport.

The event has received considerable commitment from a portfolio of globally renowned commercial partners. The Japanese giant Nitto Denko Corporation will continue as Title Partner of the Nitto ATP Finals until 2025, while Intesa Sanpaolo will welcome the event in Turin as Host Partner. Lavazza will join Emirates and FedEx as Platinum partners, Gold Partners include EA7 Emporio Armani, Rolex and Valmora Mineral Water, and Silver Partners include Dunlop, Italgas and Iren luce gas e servizi.

Andrea Gaudenzi, ATP Chairman, said: “We have no doubts that the City of Turin will prove exceptional hosts for the Nitto ATP Finals, with their focus on innovation and putting fans’ experience at the heart of everything they do. Launching the countdown to the tournament is an exciting milestone, and we look forward to five years of close collaboration with all event partners, to continue to build upon the growth of our season finale.”

Angelo Binaghi, FIT Chairman, said: “It has been two years since Turin bid to host the Nitto ATP Finals from 2021-2025. After prevailing over forty foreign cities, and following two years of extraordinary commitment, the real countdown to Turin now begins. We would not have done it without the passion and drive of the region, in particular the Mayor of Turin, Chiara Appendino, and without the fundamental support of the Government, the Piedmont Region and our brand Partners. On behalf of the entire national tennis movement, within which the Nitto ATP Finals will provide a formidable promotional uplift, we extend our thanks. I do not hesitate to define this moment as the happiest in the Federation’s 110-year history.”

Vincenzo Spadafora, Minister for Youth policies and Sport, said: “The Nitto ATP Finals, from 2021 to 2025 in Turin, will open a season of great international sport in Italy. The tournament represents an opportunity for Turin and Piedmont to earn a special place in the hearts of tennis fans around the world. The great teamwork of the FIT, the City of Turin and the Piedmont Region, with the support of the Government, has made this important achievement possible.”

Chiara Appendino, Mayor of Turin, said: “Turin has a long tradition of sport and, thanks to an extraordinary team effort, we are delighted to bring the Nitto ATP Finals to our city. We look ahead to the next five years with determination, confident in the knowledge the event that will have a positive economic impact to our territory of about €600 million and strengthen the image of Turin all over the world. I thank everyone who made it possible and who is working with us. It will be an extraordinary event.”

Alberto Cirio, President of Piedmont Region, said: “Sport has always been a powerful means of working together and, with the difficult circumstances we currently face, team spirit is now more important than ever. Health data from our Region shows improvement, which we must protect and consolidate, to allow a sustainable restart. The Nitto ATP Finals will be one of the engines of this restart, a great opportunity for our territory to look ahead, and to get back to talking about Turin and Piedmont in every part of the world.”

Tickets for the 2021 Nitto ATP Finals are now on sale at NittoATPFinals.com.

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Family Affair: Brazil's Meligeni Follows In Uncle's Footsteps With Sao Paulo Crown

It was in 1993 that former World No. 25 Fernando Meligeni reigned on home soil in Sao Paulo, launching his pro career with a first ATP Challenger Tour title. Now, 27 years later, the Brazilian’s nephew is carving a path of his own.

Same city, same result, different Meligeni. On Sunday, Felipe Meligeni celebrated his maiden moment at the Sao Paulo Open Tennis, capturing his first Challenger crown in emphatic fashion. With his family and girlfriend in attendance, the 22-year-old dropped one set all week on the clay of the Clube Hipico Santo Amaro. It all culminated in a 6-2, 7-6(1) final victory over Portugal’s Frederico Ferreira Silva.

It was an emotional day for Meligeni, who broke down in tears during the trophy ceremony. To win your first Challenger title is a special achievement. But doing so in your home country and in front of your loved ones created the perfect environment for the Brazilian.

“I’m speechless,” exclaimed Meligeni. “I didn’t expect that. My first Challenger title. I just didn’t expect it. I am very happy. It’s very exciting. I tried to stay as calm as possible. I played very well and it was a sensational week. It was nice to have my girlfriend and my family supporting me in this achievement. And my sister (Carolina) won an ITF title in Egypt today as well. It’s a double celebration weekend.”

Meligeni is hoping to follow in his uncle’s footsteps and establish himself inside the Top 100 of the FedEx ATP Rankings. During his 13-year career, Fernando won more than 200 matches, claimed three ATP Tour titles and reached the Roland Garros semi-finals in 1999. He would secure nine victories over Top 10 opponents, including former World No. 1s Pete Sampras, Yevgeny Kafelnikov, Patrick Rafter, Carlos Moya and Andy Roddick.

While Felipe has a long way to go to get to his uncle’s level, he acknowledges that this is a significant step in his career. In February, in his ATP Tour debut, he took a set off World No. 3 Dominic Thiem at the Rio Open presented by Claro. Now, he is an ATP Challenger Tour champion.

“I really wanted to end the year among the Top 250 in the world and to be able to compete in Grand Slam qualifying in 2021. I have one more tournament next week and I want to lower my ranking even more. Who knows, at the end of next year I could be Top 100.”

Meligeni isn’t only impressing on the singles court. A former junior Grand Slam doubles champion, at the 2016 US Open, he would team up with Luis David Martinez to take the doubles crown in Sao Paulo as well. It marked their second straight week with a title together, following their victory in Guayaquil, Ecuador.

Meligeni soars 64 spots to a career-high No. 242 in the FedEx ATP Rankings and is up to No. 123 in the FedEx ATP Doubles Rankings. He will conclude his 2020 campaign at next week’s Challenger season finale in his hometown of Campinas.

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Watch Hot Shots: 19-Year-Old Tirante On Fire In Reaching First Challenger Final

The ATP Tour season might be over, but dreams are still being realized on the ATP Challenger Tour.

One year ago, Thiago Tirante was in London as a Nitto ATP Finals sparring partner, hitting with the likes of Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal. This week, making just his fourth Challenger appearance, Tirante celebrated a breakout campaign in Lima, Peru. The 19-year-old became the youngest player from Argentina to reach a Challenger final since Facundo Arguello in 2011.

The native of La Plata would eventually fall to Daniel Elahi Galan in Sunday’s final, but not before capturing all the headlines in Lima. Having entered the week with just one victory in his young career on the circuit, he left with an unforgettable run to the championship as a qualifier. Tirante, who rises 163 spots to a career-high No. 376 in the FedEx ATP Rankings, joins Carlos Alcaraz, Lorenzo Musetti, Brandon Nakashima and Tomas Machac as teenagers to reach a final in 2020.

Tirante, who worked for his mom at their hometown pharmacy during the tour’s COVID-19 hiatus, also trained at his uncle’s tennis club in La Plata. When the professional circuit resumed in August, he would capture his first pro title at an ITF event in Tunisia and later followed that up with his dream week in Lima.

The Argentine introduced himself with stunning shotmaking, amazing agility and dogged defence. A ‘Hot Shot’ machine, he submitted a pair of immediate contenders for our Top 5 Challenger Shots of November…

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Nitto ATP Finals: The Transition To Turin

Italy’s first capital will be the epicentre of the tennis world next November as the Nitto ATP Finals moves to Turin, a stunning city in Northern Italy that’s known for its grand palazzos, fabulous regional cuisine, Baroque architecture, and its rich sporting tradition.

After 12 years anchored at The O2 in London, the move to Turin could not be better timed. No other nation has made more recent progress in producing top tennis talent than the glorious country that gave us pizza, pasta and the piano, among many other indispensable treasures. There are now eight Italian players, including Turin native Lorenzo Sonego, in the Top 100 of the FedEx ATP Rankings, double the number from 10 years ago. Many more are likely to follow thanks to the country’s substantial investment in the sport, which includes supporting the second most ATP Challenger tournaments in the world, behind only the United States.

According to Alberto Sacco, Turin’s Deputy Mayor in charge of Commerce and Tourism, the city’s drive to bring the world’s greatest tennis players to Torino, as the Italians call the city, started with its young, tennis-loving mayor, Chiara Appendino, who met her husband on a tennis court. Mayor Appendino told the Italian tennis channel Supertennis that the success of tournaments like the Next Gen ATP Finals in Milan and the Internazionali BNL d’Italia in Rome and Italian players like Jannik Sinner, Matteo Berrettini, and Sonego helped bring the Nitto ATP Finals to her hometown. “We are extremely proud that Turin has been chosen to host the [Nitto] ATP Finals (from) 2021-2025, as sport has long been a significant part of the history and the culture of our city,” Mayor Appendino said.

Sacco, says that the Torinesi, as natives of Turin are called, can’t wait to welcome tennis fans and players to their city. “Torino is a beautiful city with a good climate, incredible palaces, great food, beautiful hotels, shops and museums.”

Indeed, travellers have been raving about underrated Turin since at least 1878 when Mark Twain spent time in the city and fell in love with the place.

“Turin is a beautiful city, its spaciousness exceeds, I think, everything that has ever been conceived before,” he wrote. “Its streets are extraordinarily wide, the paved squares prodigious, the houses are huge and well-built…One walks along these spacious and always sheltered streets, and along the way passes by the most gracious shops and the most inviting restaurants.”

The philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche lived in Turin a decade after Twain’s visit, and fell in love with the city’s miles of porticos, its second-hand bookstores, and its gelato. He called it “the capital of discovery, the first place in which I am possible”.

If you’re never been to Turin, you may only be aware of a few of its principal claims to fame. Surrounded by rolling green hills and Alpine peaks, it’s the home of the Juventus football club; it hosted the Winter Olympics in 2006, and the Cathedral of Turin holds the Shroud of Turin, an ancient burial shroud depicting Jesus of Nazareth, which believers think he was wrapped in after his crucifixion. But there’s a lot more to know and love about this enchanting city of about 900,000 on the banks of Italy’s longest river, the Po.

Tourist arrivals plunged in Italy and around the world in 2020, but with Covid-19 vaccines on the way, Italy’s top destinations — Rome, Venice, and Florence — will no doubt be inundated with visitors thanks to a massive pent up demand from people around the world who’ve been cooped up and want to travel. If you love Italy and want to enjoy its dolce vita without the crowds and high prices, a lovely, unspoiled city like Turin is well worth a second look, especially if you’re a tennis fan who’d like to take in the tournament along with a dose of Italian culture.

Founded about 2,400 years ago by a Celtic tribe, the Taurini, the original name for Turin comes from the Celtic word “tau”, which means mountain. Torino means “little bull” and the bull is a symbol of the city. The Savoy family conquered the city and ruled for some 600 years.

Turin was a hotbed of Italian nationalism and served as Italy’s first unified capital from 1861 until 1865 when it moved to Florence (and later Rome.) It was and still is a centre for trade and industry and the great wealth that commerce has brought the region resulted in what is now a bounty for the visitor: spectacular palaces, cathedrals, gardens, parks and public art galore. It’s no wonder that Conde Nasté Traveler magazine has called Turin the Paris of Italy.

A few of the area’s standout attractions include the fabulous art and architecture of the Savoy Residences, a collection of palazzos, villas and other notable buildings that are UNESCO World Heritage Sites, the Museo Egizio, which has the largest collection of Egyptian antiquities outside Egypt, and the national museum of cinema, where you can check out Federico Fellini’s famous red scarf and learn about the city’s contribution to Italy’s film culture.

Turin is also a city of readers. In his book, Stranger in Turin, Italo Calvino called it a city of “rational, clarifying intelligence”. Liberia Luxemburg, the city’s oldest bookstore, is worth a trip, as are the bookstalls along the Via Po, the street where Nietzsche is said to have gone mad after seeing a horse flogged while out for a stroll on January 3, 1889.

Of course, this being Italy, you’d have to try very, very hard to find something bad to eat or drink in Turin and the surrounding region of Piedmont. Sacco says that the city is Italy’s unofficial chocolate capital; there’s an annual chocolate festival that takes place each year in November, typically right around the same time as the Nitto ATP Finals. Bicerin is Turin’s take on a decadent hot chocolate — it’s a layered mix of chocolate, espresso and heavy cream or milk served in a tulip-shaped glass.

Turin is also home to Grom, one of the world’s premier gelato chains. A great local flavour to try at Grom or another local institution like Alberto Marchetti Gelaterie is gianduia, which is a milk chocolate-hazelnut mix that inspired the recipe for Nutella. The city is also home to the coffee company, Lavazza; you can people-watch and get your caffeine fix in style at one of Turin’s historic cafe’s like Al Bicerin, founded in 1763, or the Art Nouveau Caffè Baratti & Milano, opened in 1873.

Sacco says that November, when the tournament will be held in 2021, is an ideal time to visit his hometown. “It’s not too hot and not too cold,” he said. “November is one of the best months in Torino. There’s a modern art festival and it’s the month where you can find white truffles, which come from Alba, near Torino.”

There are 46 Michelin star restaurants in Piedmont, nine of them in Turin.

The key sporting rivalry in Turin that defines relationships and establishes bragging rights is the Derby della Mole, which pits local football clubs Juventus and Torino against one another. The derby is named after the Mole Antonelliana, a striking 19th Century building crowned with a huge dome and conical spire. You can take a glass elevator to the top for panoramic views of the city. It was once a synagogue but is now home to the Cinema Museum.

Sacco, a Juventus fan from before birth by his reckoning, says that Torinesi tend to support Torino, while Juventus is supported by the working class, particularly those who came from other parts of the country to work in Turin in the 1970’s. If you don’t have a chance to take in the derby while in town, you can at least tour Juventus’ stadium, which has a museum devoted to the team’s history.

Sacco says that the city is handling the pandemic quite well and is confident it will be more than ready to host tennis fans in a full arena at this time next year.

The arena is located across from one of the city’s loveliest parks and has great public transportation links with the city centre, which is just a few minutes away. Turin is just an hour away from Milan by high-speed train or two hours to the Bergamo airport, which is service by a number of low cost carriers like Ryanair.

The city known as the cradle of Italian liberty is known as one of Italy’s commercial capitals and is among its wealthiest cities, but Sacco insists that it’s also a youthful place with more than 100,000 students where people know how to have fun. As the locals say in Piedmontese dialect, a l’é tut bin— everything is fine in Torino.

“Torino is full of open-air bars, we go out onto the streets, we drink coffee and wine until late into the night,” he says. “Come to Piazza Vittorio, one of the biggest squares in the world, it’s full of people eating outside, it’s a big party for everyone. You have to come see it yourself.”

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